Natural Patterns Applied to the Design of Microchannel Heat Sinks

Author(s):  
Carlos Alberto Rubio-Jimenez ◽  
Abel Hernandez-Guerrero ◽  
Jose Cuauhtemoc Rubio-Arana ◽  
Satish Kandlikar

The present work shows a study developed of the thermal and hydrodynamic behaviors present in microchannel heat sinks formed by non-conventional arrangements. These arrangements are based on patterns that nature presents. There are two postulates that model natural forms in a mathematical way: the Allometric Law and the Biomimetic Tendency. Both theories have been applied in the last few years in different fields of science and technology. Using both theories, six models were analyzed (there are three cases proposed and both theories are applied to each case). Microchannel heat sinks with split channels are obtained as a result of applying these theories. Water is the cooling fluid of the system. The inlet hydraulic diameter is kept in each model in order to have a reference for comparison. The Reynolds number inside the heat sink remains below the transition Reynolds number value published by several researchers for this channel dimensions. The inlet Reynolds number of the fluid at the channel inlet is the same for each model. A heat flux is supplied to the bottom wall of the heat sink. The magnitude of this heat flux is 150 W/cm2. The temperature fields and velocity profiles are obtained for each case and compared.

Author(s):  
M. B. Effat ◽  
M. S. AbdelKarim ◽  
O. Hassan ◽  
M. Abdelgawad

With the advance of miniaturization technology, more and more electronic components are placed onto small electronic chips. This leads to the generation of high amounts of thermal energy that should be removed for the safe operation of these electronic components. Microchannel heat sinks, where electronic chips are liquid cooled instead of the conventional air cooling techniques, were proposed as a means to improve cooling rates. Later on, double layer micro channel heat sinks were suggested as an upgrade to single layer microchannel heat sinks with a better thermal performance. In the present study the effects of increasing the number of layers of the microchannel heat sink to three-layers as well as the effect of changing the flow arrangements (counter and parallel flows) within the three channel layers on the thermal performance of the heat sink were investigated. In all investigated cases the temperature distribution over the base of the microchannel heat sink system and the total pressure drop are reported. A range of mass flow rates from 1×10−4 to 5×10−4 kg/s was considered. Uniform heat flux conditions were considered during the study. COMSOL Multiphysics finite element package was employed for the numerical analysis. Results indicate significant enhancement in the uniformity of the temperature on the processor surface when multi-layer channels were employed, compared to the single-layer case. The uniformity in the temperature distribution was accompanied by reduction of pressure drop across channels for the same mass flow rate and heat flux conditions. The counter flow arrangement showed the best temperature distribution with the uniform heat flux cases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jienan Shen ◽  
Xiuxiu Li ◽  
Yongsheng Zhu ◽  
Boya Zhang ◽  
Hang Guo ◽  
...  

Abstract Numerical studies have been performed to analyze the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of nine microchannel heat sinks (MCHS) with different shapes and different arrangements of the ribs and cavities on the sidewalls, using three common shapes (square, triangle, and circular) of ribs or cavities as the basic structure in this work. The boundary conditions, governing equations, friction factor (f), Nusselt number (Nu), and performance evaluation criteria (ξ) were considered to determine which design was the best in terms of the heat transfer, the pressure drop, and the overall performance. It was observed that no matter how the circular ribs or cavities were arranged, its heat sink performance was better than the other two shapes for Reynolds number of 200–1000. Therefore, circular ribs or cavities can be considered as the best structure to improve the performance of MCHS. In addition, the heat sink performance of the microchannel heat sink with symmetrical circular ribs (MCHS-SCR) was improved by 31.2 % compared with the conventional microchannel heat sink at Re = 667. This was because in addition to the formation of transverse vortices in the channel, four symmetrical and reverse longitudinal vortices are formed to improve the mixing efficiency of the central fluid (low temperature) and the near-wall fluid (high temperature). Then, as the Reynolds number increases, the heat sink performance of MCHS-SCR dropped sharply. The heat sink performance of microchannel heat sinks with staggered ribs and cavities (MCHS-SCRC, MCHS-STRC, and MCHS-SSRC) exceeded that of MCHS-SCR. This indicated that the microchannel heat sink with staggered ribs and cavities was more suitable for high Reynolds number (Re > 800).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahyar Pourghasemi ◽  
Nima Fathi

Abstract 3-D numerical simulations are performed to investigate liquid sodium (Na) flow and the heat transfer within miniature heat sinks with different geometries and hydraulic diameters of less than 5 mm. Two different straight small-scale heat sinks with rectangular and triangular cross-sections are studied in the laminar flow with the Reynolds number up to 1900. The local and average Nusselt numbers are obtained and compared against eachother. At the same surface area to volume ratio, rectangular minichannel heat sink leads to almost 280% higher convective heat transfer rate in comparison with triangular heat sink. It is observed that the difference between thermal efficiencies of rectangular and triangular minichannel heat sinks was independent of flow Reynolds number.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1163 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Md Tanbir Sarowar

Microchannel heat sink plays a vital role in removing a considerable amount of heat flux from a small surface area from different electronic devices. In recent times, the rapid development of electronic devices requires the improvement of these heat sinks to a greater extent. In this aspect, the selection of appropriate substrate materials of the heat sinks is of vital importance. In this paper, three boron-based ultra-high temperature ceramic materials (ZrB2, TiB2, and HfB2) are compared as a substrate material for the microchannel heat sink using a numerical approach. The fluid flow and heat transfer are analyzed using the finite volume method. The results showed that the maximum temperature of the heat source didn’t exceed 355K at 3.6MWm-2 for any material. The results also indicated HfB2 and TiB2 to be more useful as a substrate material than ZrB2. By applying 3.6 MWm-2 heat flux at the source, the maximum obtained surface heat transfer coefficient was 175.2 KWm-2K-1 in a heat sink having substrate material HfB2.


Author(s):  
Ling Ling ◽  
Yanfeng Fan ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan

Higher heat flux is produced by Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) because of their reduced size and increased clock speed. At the mean time, studies of non-uniform heating conditions which are more practical than uniform heating conditions are inadequate and needed urgently. Four nonuniform heating conditions are simulated in the paper. Three heat sinks with different widths of cross-linked channels locating above the center of hotspots are studied and compared to conventional straight microchannel heat sink. Half of the module geometry is chosen to be the computational domain. Two hotspots are placed at the bottom surface. The coolant is water, whose properties are dependent on temperature. Two inlet velocities, 0.5 m/s and 1 m/s, are tested for each heat sink. Temperature profile at the hotspots, pressure drop and total thermal resistance are selected as criteria of evaluating heat sink performance. All heat sinks have better performance when there is an upstream hotspot or the upstream hotspot is subjected to a higher heat flux. Cross-linked channel width of 0.5 mm has the best benefit to obtain better temperature uniformity without increasing the maximum temperature on the bottom surface.


Author(s):  
Ahmed Eltaweel ◽  
Abdulla Baobeid ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan

Non-uniform heat fluxes are commonly observed in thermo-electronic devices that require distinct thermal management strategies for effective heat dissipation and robust performance. The limited research available on non-uniform heat fluxes focus mostly on microchannel heat sinks while the fundamental component, i.e. a single microchannel, has received restricted attention. In this work, an experimental setup for the analysis of variable axial heat flux is used to study the heat transfer in a single microchannel with fully developed flow under the effect of different heat flux profiles. Initially a hot spot at different locations, with a uniform background heat flux, is studied at different Reynolds numbers while varying the maximum heat fluxes in order to compute the heat transfer in relation to its dependent variables. Measurements of temperature, pressure, and flow rates at a different locations and magnitudes of hot spot heat fluxes are presented, followed by a detailed analysis of heat transfer characteristics of a single microchannel under non-uniform heating. Results showed that upstream hotspots have lower tube temperatures compared to downstream ones with equal amounts of heat fluxes. This finding can be of importance in enhancing microchannel heat sinks effectiveness in reducing maximum wall temperatures for the same amount of heat released, by redistributing spatially fluxes in a descending profile.


1994 ◽  
Vol 116 (4) ◽  
pp. 290-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morris B. Bowers ◽  
Issam Mudawar

Mini-channel (D = 2.54 mm) and micro-channel (D = 510 μm) heat sinks with a 1-cm2 heated surface were tested for their high heat flux performance with flow boiling of R-113. Experimental results yielded CHF values in excess of 200 W cm−2 for flow rates less than 95 ml min−1 (0.025 gpm) over a range of inlet subcooling from 10 to 32°C. Heat diffusion within the heat sink was analyzed to ascertain the optimum heat sink geometry in terms of channel spacing and overall thickness. A heat sink thickness to channel diameter ratio of 1.2 provided a good compromise between minimizing overall thermal resistance and structural integrity. A ratio of channel pitch to diameter of less than two produced negligible surface temperature gradients even with a surface heat flux of 200 W cm−2. To further aid in determining channel diameter for a specific cooling application, a pressure drop model was developed, which is presented in the second part of the study.


2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Escher ◽  
T. Brunschwiler ◽  
N. Shalkevich ◽  
A. Shalkevich ◽  
T. Burgi ◽  
...  

Nanofluids have been proposed to improve the performance of microchannel heat sinks. In this paper, we present a systematic characterization of aqueous silica nanoparticle suspensions with concentrations up to 31 vol %. We determined the particle morphology by transmission electron microscope imaging and its dispersion status by dynamic light scattering measurements. The thermophysical properties of the fluids, namely, their specific heat, density, thermal conductivity, and dynamic viscosity were experimentally measured. We fabricated microchannel heat sinks with three different channel widths and characterized their thermal performance as a function of volumetric flow rate for silica nanofluids at concentrations by volume of 0%, 5%, 16%, and 31%. The Nusselt number was extracted from the experimental results and compared with the theoretical predictions considering the change of fluids bulk properties. We demonstrated a deviation of less than 10% between the experiments and the predictions. Hence, standard correlations can be used to estimate the convective heat transfer of nanofluids. In addition, we applied a one-dimensional model of the heat sink, validated by the experiments. We predicted the potential of nanofluids to increase the performance of microchannel heat sinks. To this end, we varied the individual thermophysical properties of the coolant and studied their impact on the heat sink performance. We demonstrated that the relative thermal conductivity enhancement must be larger than the relative viscosity increase in order to gain a sizeable performance benefit. Furthermore, we showed that it would be preferable to increase the volumetric heat capacity of the fluid instead of increasing its thermal conductivity.


Author(s):  
Bladimir Ramos-Alvarado ◽  
Peiwen Li ◽  
Hong Liu ◽  
Abel Hernandez-Guerrero

Novel flow channel configurations in heat sinks for electronics cooling were proposed in this paper. Computational analyses were carried out to better understand the heat transfer performance, the uniformity of temperature fields of the heat sinking surface, as well as the pressure losses and pumping power in the operation of heat sinks. Comparison of the overall performance regarding to temperature uniformity on the heat sink surface and pumping power consumption was made for heat sinks having novel flow channel configurations and having traditional flow channel configurations. It has been found that the novel flow channel configuration dramatically reduces the pressure loss in the flow field. Giving the same pumping power consumption of an electronics cooling process, the temperature difference on surface of the heat sink which has novel flow channel configuration can be much lower than that of the heat sinks which have traditional flow channel configurations.


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